Along Route 74: Does understanding always have to be complicated?

Published: Sunday, February 16, 2014 at 11:23 PM.

One phrase tells a lot about contemporary American culture -- “It’s complicated.”

But the truth is, we run from complexity today. We want things simple. Part of the attachment many of us have to the past is that it seemed like things were less complicated then.

We don’t want to have understand details. That attitude pervades relationships, jobs, politics, religion and many other aspects of life.

Unfortunately, going down that road has caused a lot of people to have the attention span of a gnat. It's why fewer people read ... period. Technology contributes to that. In our search for a life of ease however, the appliances around us – cars, televisions, computers and phones – have gotten more intricate.

That’s one reason a lot of people fight change, something at times I’ve learned about myself, because you literally have to plug in and find out how things work before you can use them in your day-to-day existence.

It’s not difficult to see the political consequences. With cheerleading slogan factories like MSNBC on the left and Fox News on the right, in-depth understanding and discussion of important issues – which are rarely simple – seems to have vanished. So little gets done on that front.

Now trying to keep things manageable in each of our lives is completely normal. But it does take rather unusual paths sometimes.

For me, one example has to do with movies. Twenty years ago I was still one of those folks who wanted to see every major release that people might be talking about. Technology, of course, made that easier with VCRs and later DVDs.

Yet I’ve found myself drawing away from film in recent years. I catch myself watching the first 20 minutes of something to understand the set-up, then maybe the last 20 or so to see the resolution. The details in between are just something I don’t choose to think about.

I hope that never happens for me with baseball. Watching games in the summertime is great escapism – the sounds and rhythm of the game, the strategy and what the announcers are saying add to my enjoyment. The game’s complexity makes it rich the same way others find in literature, opera, art and other endeavors.

But if I catch myself only wanting to know the score at the end, with no patience to actually see a ball thrown or caught, I’ll know I’ve slipped off the deep end.

Sometimes the quest to make things so vanilla we don’t have to use our minds robs us of some of our humanity. That’s a fight we should never surrender, complicated though it might be.

One phrase tells a lot about contemporary American culture -- “It’s complicated.”

But the truth is, we run from complexity today. We want things simple. Part of the attachment many of us have to the past is that it seemed like things were less complicated then.

We don’t want to have understand details. That attitude pervades relationships, jobs, politics, religion and many other aspects of life.

Unfortunately, going down that road has caused a lot of people to have the attention span of a gnat. It's why fewer people read ... period. Technology contributes to that. In our search for a life of ease however, the appliances around us – cars, televisions, computers and phones – have gotten more intricate.

That’s one reason a lot of people fight change, something at times I’ve learned about myself, because you literally have to plug in and find out how things work before you can use them in your day-to-day existence.

It’s not difficult to see the political consequences. With cheerleading slogan factories like MSNBC on the left and Fox News on the right, in-depth understanding and discussion of important issues – which are rarely simple – seems to have vanished. So little gets done on that front.

Now trying to keep things manageable in each of our lives is completely normal. But it does take rather unusual paths sometimes.

For me, one example has to do with movies. Twenty years ago I was still one of those folks who wanted to see every major release that people might be talking about. Technology, of course, made that easier with VCRs and later DVDs.

Yet I’ve found myself drawing away from film in recent years. I catch myself watching the first 20 minutes of something to understand the set-up, then maybe the last 20 or so to see the resolution. The details in between are just something I don’t choose to think about.

I hope that never happens for me with baseball. Watching games in the summertime is great escapism – the sounds and rhythm of the game, the strategy and what the announcers are saying add to my enjoyment. The game’s complexity makes it rich the same way others find in literature, opera, art and other endeavors.

But if I catch myself only wanting to know the score at the end, with no patience to actually see a ball thrown or caught, I’ll know I’ve slipped off the deep end.

Sometimes the quest to make things so vanilla we don’t have to use our minds robs us of some of our humanity. That’s a fight we should never surrender, complicated though it might be.